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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25836535">Fallen Angels</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlannaofRoses/pseuds/AlannaofRoses'>AlannaofRoses</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Old Guard (Movie 2020)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst with a Happy Ending, Blood and Gore, Blood and Injury, Earthquakes, Found Family Feels, Heavy Angst, Its An Immortal Thing, M/M, Major Character Injury, Major Characters Die Multiple Times, No Kids Were Harmed in the Making of this Fic, Post Movie, Trigger Warning: Kids in Peril, a building collapses, but then they get better</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 04:00:15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,001</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25836535</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlannaofRoses/pseuds/AlannaofRoses</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>When a building collapses during a rescue mission, two of the team don't make it out.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>32</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>654</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Fallen Angels</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/RogueofShadows/gifts">RogueofShadows</a>.</li>



    </ul></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>No matter how many times Nile had watched her new companions fall in battle and rise again, she still hadn’t lost that instinctual fear when they faced a situation impossible to survive. Her brain could tell her Joe and Nicky would walk away from this, but her heart still screamed in terror as the building went down with them trapped inside.</p>
<p>Andy doesn’t even turn around, her focus firmly on the woman she is tending. They’d refused to let her into the building for this very reason, ditching her at one of the hastily erected medical tents around the area. Nile, Joe, and Nicky had headed into the unstable school building, pulling kids from the structure as quickly as they could.</p>
<p>The earthquake had been nasty, though Nile hadn’t yet heard the official numbers. Thankfully, most of the structures she could see were relatively intact.</p>
<p>If a semi-truck hadn’t been all but thrown into the front of the three-story school building, Nile suspected it would still be standing too.</p>
<p>When they had arrived, it was listing dangerously, screaming children pouring from the doors. Most of the kids had been able to get out on their own, with Nile carrying out a girl whose wheelchair had gotten stuck, and Nicky and Joe taking care of a classroom that had been blocked off by debris. Last she had seen the two men, they’d been helping a steady line of kids over the blockage.</p>
<p>But the kids had stopped coming at least thirty seconds before the building collapsed, and there was still no sign of Joe and Nicky.</p>
<p>“No casualties.”</p>
<p>Nile turned at the voice, finding the dust-streaked principal in tears.</p>
<p>“Oh my god, everyone got out okay.” She’s staring at the ruined school, all 156 students huddled with their teachers around her.</p>
<p>The principal turns to Nile. “Thank you. Thank you, bless you, you saved them. You saved them all.”</p>
<p>Nile feels her own eyes sting as she grips the woman’s hand tight. “You’re welcome. I’m glad we could be here.”</p>
<p>The principal looks around. “Where are the other two? I want to thank them too.”</p>
<p>Nile swallows, trying not to look back at the now-ruined school. “I think they went to get more supplies.” She lies. “I’m sure they’ll be back soon.”</p>
<p>“You must be angels sent from heaven itself.” The principal says, looking from Nile to Andy to the gathering crowd. “I don’t know who sent you or why you came, but you saved so many lives today. We are forever grateful.”</p>
<p>Nile can’t help but brush her fingers against the gold cross at her throat as the woman moves away.</p>
<p>She kneels next to Andy. She pitches her voice low, leaning towards the other woman’s ear. “Are they okay?”</p>
<p>Andy’s mouth is a thin line. “Well they can’t march out of that mess without a scratch unless we want questions. Either they found another way out, or we will just have to wait until the streets clear.”</p>
<p>The words make sense, but there is an itchy feeling crawling its way up Nile’s spine anyway. She has no proof, no way of knowing, but something is wrong. From the tense line of Andy’s shoulders, Nile suspects she’s no the only one who thinks so.</p>
<p>There’s nothing they can do.</p>
<p>Nile takes a deep breath and whispers a prayer for Nicky and Joe. Then she kneels in the dirty street and helps Andy continue to tend to the wounded school staff.</p>
<p>Its hours later before the last of the wounded has been taken away, the unhurt leaving in twos and threes as frantic parents pulled them close. With darkness falling, even the remaining emergency workers have mostly deserted the scene.</p>
<p>It’s eerie. The air is still thick with dust, catching against Nile’s nose and throat in a way that makes her glad for immortal healing. Around them, the city groans and creaks as it resettles itself. Caution tape flutters in the weak moonlight.</p>
<p>Andy steps to her side, handing her one of the flashlights from Nicky’s backpack, left abandoned by its owner hours earlier. Nile is absurdly grateful for the reassuring click of the light.</p>
<p>The building looks even worse in the twin beams as Andy sweeps her own flashlight across what remained of the entrance to the school.</p>
<p>“There’s nothing left.” Nile whispers, the terror she’s been fighting all day clogging her throat. Once the scene had cleared, she had looked around desperately, clinging to the ever-fainter hope that Joe and Nicky had gotten out and were just waiting for the right time to emerge.</p>
<p>It hadn’t taken long for her to admit what she already knew.</p>
<p>“What if…” Nile starts, but she can’t quite voice the question. If Joe and Nicky are dead, Nile doesn’t know how she’ll face the rest of her immortal life.</p>
<p>Andy shakes her head. “They could be trapped in an air pocket, or one of them is pinned under some rubble. I’m sure they are fine.”</p>
<p>“For thousands of years of practice, you’re a terrible liar Andy.”</p>
<p> The attempt at humor falls as flat as the attempt at reassurance. They go silent after that, sweeping their lights across the ruin of the school, lost in their own thoughts.</p>
<p>They circle the structure several times, trying to find a way in. Nile trips over shattered brick and crumpled wood, glass crunching under her feet with every step, echoing off the silent streets. Her hands and feet bleed and heal and bleed again as they scramble over the twisted ruin of the school.</p>
<p>Finally Andy crouches, pointing her light towards a gap in the rubble. “Here. It’ll be tight but…”</p>
<p>“I heal.” Nile finished, already pulling off her jacket in preparation.</p>
<p>Andy’s jaw tightened. “I’d go with you…”</p>
<p>“No.” Nile put a gentle hand on her shoulder. “They’ll need you safe. You can fuss over them when I get them out.” Then she darts into the gap before Andy can protest.</p>
<p>“I don’t fuss!” Andy hisses after her, and Nile grins.</p>
<p>The gap is as tight as Andy had warned, and Nile grits her teeth against the sting in her elbows and knees as they scrape against the wreckage. If she wasn’t immortal, she would be worried about tetanus, and probably a dozen other diseases as well. She’s pretty sure she’s getting a decent amount of dirt ground into her skin.</p>
<p>Finally, she makes it into an area that’s big enough for her to stand, only ducking slightly so as not to hit her head. It takes her a moment, with the building so changed and warped, but as the dust of her entrance settles, she recognizes the corridor.</p>
<p>The last place she had seen Joe and Nicky.</p>
<p>She struggles to orient herself, scanning the crumpled walls for the doorway she knew had to be here.</p>
<p>Then she realizes. There is a drawing to her right, strangely untouched in the destruction. She’d caught a glimpse of it hours ago as she had hurried past.</p>
<p>She swallows hard when she understands. The doorway didn’t exist anymore. In its place is a mass of twisted metal and splintered wood.</p>
<p>Joe and Nicky are somewhere underneath.</p>
<p>Her light glints off the floor, catching her attention, and Nile points the flashlight at the ground. She instantly wishes she hadn’t.</p>
<p>Blood.</p>
<p>Nile swallows hard, resisting the urge to throw up.</p>
<p>For a moment she feels overwhelmed. She has no idea what to do. She wishes Andy were here with her, or Booker, or even Copley. Most of all she wishes that she had Joe and Nicky at her side, safe and whole and not possibly dead or dying repeatedly under what was left of a children’s school.</p>
<p>And then she hears it.</p>
<p>The sudden, shocked gasp of an immortal returning to the land of the living.</p>
<p>It’s Joe. Nile has heard all of them die and revive enough to know the sounds. She can also tell, from the way the sound draws out, that his death was slow. Judging by the floor, likely blood loss.</p>
<p>Relief floods her. “Joe?”</p>
<p>Coughing, then, “Nile?”</p>
<p>“Joe! It’s me! Andy’s right outside. Are you trapped? Where is…”</p>
<p>But Nile doesn’t need to finish the question, because that’s when Nicky joins them. Unlike Joe, his reentry is harsh and violent, speaking to a harsh and violent death.</p>
<p>Joe is speaking, soothing jumbled languages layered with panic and anguish. Nile’s only catching every third word, but it’s enough to break her heart.</p>
<p>“Nicolo… my love… don’t fight… okay… I’m here. I’m here, I’m here, I’m here.”</p>
<p>Nile is frozen, listening to the awful sound of Nicky choking on his own blood for what seems like forever.  Yet the whole thing takes less than a minute, and then she hears the rattling death sigh as Nicky slips away again.</p>
<p>“Nile?” Joe is crying.</p>
<p>She doesn’t know how she didn’t hear it in his voice earlier. She brushes at her own cheek and her hand comes away wet. “Where are you?”</p>
<p>“Other side of the wall.” Joe says, his voice steady despite the agony lacing his every breath. “I’m pinned under something, my leg. It’s… I’m not sure it’s still attached actually. I’m losing a lot of blood. Nicky is in the doorway, I think? He pushed me out of the way. He’s buried, and there’s something… there’s something… he’s impaled on something.”</p>
<p>Joe’s voice is taking on a dreamlike quality. Speaking was obviously taking a lot of his energy.</p>
<p>Yet a moment later, when Nicky gasped awake again, Joe started up right where he’d left off. “Nicolo, I’m here my love. It’s okay. It’s okay. Nicolo, please.”</p>
<p>“What happened?” Nile asks, frantically searching the mess for a place to start. She has to get to them.</p>
<p>Joe waits until Nicky dies again to answer. “There were a few kids left. The doorway started to crack, and we knew it was going to come down before we could get them all out. I was in a better position, so I got under it to brace it.”</p>
<p>Nile flinches as Nicky chokes his way back to life. She ruthlessly swipes a hand across her face, clearing her blurring eyes enough to see the rubble she’s attempting to clear.</p>
<p>Joe’s languages are getting further and further from modernity as he calls to Nicky, his voice straining with exhaustion.</p>
<p>Then Nicky is gone again, and Joe continues. “The last kid got out, and I tried to release the doorway, but it was too late. It was going to come down on top of me. I think… I think Nicolo thought he could… could get us both clear if he…”</p>
<p>“Joe!” Nile yelled.</p>
<p>“Hmmm?” Joe’s voice was a thread. “Oh yeah. So Nicolo tried to tackle me, and it might have worked if the… if the building hadn’t come down… come down just then…”</p>
<p>Nicky was once again launched into life, and just as quickly hurled out of it again, Joe’s voice lasting exactly as long as it took for Nicky to complete the cycle. Nile didn’t need the horrid silence to tell her that they had gone out together this time.</p>
<p>She yanks and tugs and shoves debris in all directions, her hands growing slick with blood and sweat. She’s crying, but she knows that only distantly. Her hands are scraped raw and sliced to slivers, yet she barely feels it.</p>
<p>Joe comes back with a gasp. Nicky follows. Nicky dies. Nicky wakes. He dies again.</p>
<p>Nile is never going to forget the sounds of Nicky’s lungs filling with blood, Joe murmuring endearments in a dozen languages as his heart died in agony again and again and again.</p>
<p>She pushed and pulled and shifted rubble for what felt like hours, trying desperately not to destabilize the doorway any further, lest she increase Nicky’s pain.</p>
<p>Joe died six times while she painstakingly dug them out, his blood pooling at her feet as he bled out over and over. She lost track of how many times Nicky perished. Somehow, Joe was always back before Nicky awoke again, as if he were forcing himself to revive quickly so he could provide what comfort he could.</p>
<p>Nile tries not to think about how long this scene had been playing out in the hours they had been forced to wait for rescue.</p>
<p>Finally, finally she breaks through, bricks sliding away around the hole she’d made as she scrambles to point her flashlight into the wrecked classroom. She sees Joe first, and only barely manages not to throw up. His leg is… gone. Pulverized. What’s left of it is trapped under a good chunk of what was probably the original roof, three stories above them.</p>
<p>She knows nothing less would have kept him from Nicky’s side. In fact, from the way the dirt in front of Joe had been clawed away, she suspects he’d tried anyway.</p>
<p>He’s dead, again.</p>
<p>Both of them, fallen angels in the dirt.</p>
<p>It’s the only reason Nile allows herself a single sob when she sees their hands, tangled together next to Nicky’s head.</p>
<p>They had always faced pain together, but this was the part about being one soul in two bodies that Nile knew must hurt the most. To be unable to ease the pain of the other half of your heart.</p>
<p>She’s pulled from the thought as they jerk awake almost at the same time.</p>
<p>Joe has barely finished drawing a breath when he starts his steady stream of comfort back up. “Nicolo, I’m here, Nicolo… Nile please… my love, my heart, Nile’s here…Nicolo.”</p>
<p>Nicky dies, and before his eyes have finished fluttering shut Nile grabs the metal rod that’s buried in his chest and yanks.</p>
<p>It makes an awful, squishy, sucking sound as it pulls free, and this time Nile does actually lose her lunch, stumbling to a corner as far from the men as possible.</p>
<p>Joe sobs gratefully, and Nile turns around, wiping her mouth, to see Nicky’s chest already healing.</p>
<p>This time, when he revives, he breathes air.</p>
<p>“Nicolo.” Joe says reverently.</p>
<p>“Yusuf?” Nicky mutters, obviously weak and exhausted, his wounds still closing slowly.</p>
<p>“I’m here, my heart.” Joe says, pressing a kiss to Nicky’s knuckles. He shakes with relief.</p>
<p>For a long moment, they just breathe together. Nile averts her eyes, examining the chunk of roof still pining Joe. She’s going to need a fulcrum of some sort to lever it off of him.</p>
<p>She moves in for a closer look, her toe stubbing against a bit of debris, and Joe grunts.</p>
<p>“Yusuf!” Nicky cries, sitting up. His eyes search for the source of Joe’s pain until he finds it, staring horrified at Joe’s leg.</p>
<p>“Help me?” Nile says to Nicky firmly, trying to get him to focus on her rather than the panic she can see building in his eyes.</p>
<p>“Yes, I… yes.” Nicky scrambles to his feet, his hand not leaving Joe’s until the last possible second. His other hand goes to his chest, feeling for the wound that has already closed.</p>
<p>Nile touches his arm. “I know.” She says gently. “Help me get this off of Joe, and then we can all get out of here and process this together, okay?”</p>
<p>Nicky nods, still looking lost, but he follows her lead as she begins to maneuver a heavy board under the chunk of ceiling pining Joe. It takes both of them straining to their limits to lift the rock, and Nile is once again grateful for near-instant healing as her muscles relax themselves in short order.</p>
<p>Nicky drops to his knees next to Joe as soon as the rock lifts. Joe barely has time to smile at him before he dies again, blood loss taking a final toll even as his leg begins to knit itself back together. Nile and Nicky wait, their breathing loud in the darkness.</p>
<p>Joe’s reentry is almost peaceful, his face already framed by Nicky’s hands, and Nile looks away as they kiss. </p>
<p>It’s desperate, and anguished, and it breaks Nile’s heart all over again. They’re both crying softly, clinging to one another. They seem to have forgotten she’s even here, lost in their relief.</p>
<p>Nile leaves them be, knowing they will follow once they can. She crawls back through the tunnel she’d entered through, barely feeling the pain from shredded joints as she does so.</p>
<p>Andy is waiting impatiently when she emerges.</p>
<p>It only takes a second for all the color to drain out of her face.</p>
<p>“Nile?”</p>
<p>She breaks. Andy stares in horror as she crumples, sobbing into her hands.</p>
<p>“No.”</p>
<p>Nile shakes her head at the devastation in Andy’s voice, reaching out a hand. “Sorry, sorry, they’re okay.” She needs Andy to understand. “They’re coming, they just…”</p>
<p>“What happened, Nile?”</p>
<p>She can’t find the words, the image of them lying bloody and broken on the schoolroom floor vivid behind her eyes. She just shakes her head again.</p>
<p>Andy makes a sudden, wounded sound and Nile doesn’t even have to look up to know Joe and Nicky are behind her now, emerging from the tunnel like blood-streaked angels, their hands still clasped.</p>
<p>Nile feels them kneel at her back, Nicky wrapping an arm around her even as Andy rushes forward and clutches at Joe, the four of them tangled together in the street, filthy and clingy and whole again.</p>
<p>Andy, with one arm still gripping Joe’s shoulders, reaches out and presses a trembling hand to Nicky’s chest, to the jagged tear in his shirt. Both men are utterly soaked in blood, some of it still fresh and bright against their skin.</p>
<p>Nicky covers her hand with his own. “Nile got us out.” He says softly. He trades places with Joe, their hands never coming apart, to hold Andy. Nile feels Joe curl around her, pressing a kiss to her hair.</p>
<p>“Thank you, Nile.” Joe whispers.</p>
<p>“Always.”</p>
<p>She wraps an arm around each of them, and memorizes this. Their heartbeats, their pulses, their skin warm and their eyes bright. Alive.</p>
<p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>RogueofShadows asked for a scenario in which one of the Guard (preferably Nicky), were injured in such a way that they died repeatedly while the others tried to free them. Hope you enjoyed it dearheart.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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